FR2 - The Dolmetsch 1930s Legacy Project - Episode 3

Flanders Recorder Duo, Tom Beets & Joris Van Goethem
The Dolmetsch 1930s Legacy Project, episode 3:
DOLMETSCH RECORDERS IN THE 1920s AND 1930s
Main sources and further reading:
Andrew Pinnock, Boring for Britain: the Design, Development and Mass Deployment of Dolmetsch Recorders, 1920-1980: gs.galpinsocie...
Alexandra Williams, The Renaissance and Revival of the Recorder in England 1879-1941 (PhD, University of Melbourne, 2005)
Shirley Drake, A History of The Pipers' Guild (Essex, 2006)
Listening examples:
See recent videos on this channel
Websites:
www.srp.org.uk
www.pipersguild.org
www.dolmetsch.com/handmaderecorders.htm
www.flanders-recorder-duo.be
Transcript:
Today, most people who think of Dolmetsch recorders have the firm’s “modernized” type of instrument in mind. For a quarter century, 1945-1970 say, these were used by most of the world’s leading players. But the majority of Dolmetsch recorders produced before the Second World War were tightly-voiced baroque-style instruments, often at 415 pitch and with undercut finger holes and arched windways.
Baroque copies and the question of pitch:
When did modern recorder makers first start to take an interest in eighteenth century originals and start producing quality copies of them? Not in the 1960s or 70s, as is often claimed. Frans Brüggen and others did help to popularize baroque-type instruments then, and did raise playing standards to a new level; but whole sets of recorders at A415 were available in 1930s England, made in Arnold Dolmetsch's Haslemere workshop. Dolmetsch took originals by Peter Bressan and Thomas Stanesby senior as his starting points, slightly raised their pitch from around 405 to 415 and rationalized their fingering. Customers could order instruments at A415 or at A440 from the late 1920s. 440 would have been a more convenient choice for most. They played astonishingly well, and managed to preserve the playing “feel” of actual baroque recorders at either pitch.
Modernization in the 1930s:
Dolmetsch recorders were redesigned in the late 1930s, by Arnold's son Carl, so that they could be played louder than rival makers’ and could be manufactured more efficiently - in greater numbers to meet growing demand. Dozens of German workshops were producing recorders at the same time, putting Dolmetsch under competitive pressure to which the firm needed to respond. Modernization happened in stages. A number of transitional models feature on our second video, so that listeners can hear for themselves what effect the changes had.
Modernized Dolmetsch recorders were perfect tools for a range of jobs that needed doing before the historically-informed performance movement took off. Frans Brüggen’s well-publicized switch from the modernized recorder to eighteenth-century originals and copies of them, c.1970, dented the Dolmetsch image and created space for a new generation of makers going back to baroque themselves. Few of these new-generation makers knew or wanted to acknowledge that Dolmetsch had pioneered the “purist”-copy approach fifty years earlier.
The bamboo pipe movement - recorders for free!
In the 1920s, the English music teacher Margaret James founded the British bamboo pipers’ movement. Following the ideals of the “Arts and Crafts” movement and pursuing a “simpler” life after the First World War, its main project was to organise free music education. Key for them was making instruments themselves, out of a natural, and a free, material: bamboo. The Pipers’ Guild of Great Britain recruited well: it had 704 members by 1936, branches, courses, festivals, and its own magazine. Ralph Vaughan Williams became Guild President in 1949!
The British Pipers’ Guild provided inspiration and a model for Edgar Hunt in his marketing and organization of the school recorder movement in Great Britain. Hunt saw huge potential for the recorder as a music teaching tool. The cost of Dolmetsch instruments prevented their wide adoption in the school sector, so in the mid 1930s Edgar Hunt started importing much cheaper German-made instruments with “English”/Dolmetsch rather than the much-derided “German” fingering. SATB-consorts were available, and in fairly wide school use by the outbreak of the 2nd World War. During the war Dolmetsch’s workshop staff made parts for aircraft instead of musical instruments, gaining useful production line experience in the process. This enabled the firm to introduce a range of bakelite (plastic) recorders in the late 1940s, with which they quickly came to dominate the school recorder market in English-speaking countries.
Carl Dolmetsch and Edgar Hunt were rival recorder advocates through the 1930s. To prevent destructive competition, friends persuaded them to collaborate in forming Britain’s Society of Recorder Players, modelled after the British Pipers’ Guild. This launched in 1937, and its significance is, up to this very day, enormous.
www.flanders-recorder-duo.be